


Who Would You Have Been, If You Chose? (There was no choice)

by Haospart



Series: No Real Choices [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Character, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Dissociation, LGBTQ Character, NaNoWriMo 2020, Neurodiversity, Novelization, Sith Inquisitor Storyline, Sith Inquisitor Storyline Spoilers, Sith being Sith, Stimming, Zal's a Madness Sorc so like, his brain is a Trip, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27336922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haospart/pseuds/Haospart
Summary: GUESS I'M NOVELIZING THE SITH INQUISITOR STORY WITH MY TINY LITTLE INQUISIDAD.NaNoWriMo got me like "I should novelize this shit, bc Zal's Great" and now I'm Here lol.Welcome tothis.  I'm shite at summaries but here we are.
Series: No Real Choices [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186013
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14
Collections: Continuity:  Love and Everything





	1. Korriban:  Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Featured Character:  
> Sith Inquisitor - Zal-hessah Vooretta

It was rough landing, to say the least.

A powerful wave of  _ something _ burning in the horizon.

Well, if you could call the barest scrap of cold, red desert that could be seen from the undersized windows a horizon. But that wasn’t  _ really _ what it was, it wasn’t something that could be seen. It was the feeling of a horizon. Vertigo and dread in equal measure as the end of existence approached, where you knew logically that there must be something beyond, but in your heart it felt like the end. A piece of the mind that sung a song that had never seen logic or reason, just cold fury and panic that splintered into a thousand pieces at the sight of a simple horizon line.  _ Something _ must be beyond it, the reason admonishes, but the heart and that fraction of the mind cannot help but ignore it. It’s the End.

It still might  _ really _ be the end. Not the end of the geography, or the desert, or the cliffs. But the end of the line. The  _ true _ end, falling off the edge of a road that stopped existing with only a moments’ panicked notice.

It  _ is _ the end.

It’s Korriban.

So many who step foot on the planet never take another step off it again. Acolytes who are  _ trained _ and who are well-versed in the ritualistic treachery of Sith life, people raised and taught to succeed in such an environment, even they fall to the blade of a peer or the maw of some horrible animal. Even more fall to the desert, to the cold and the dry, to say nothing of those consumed by the planet itself.

Screwing his eyes shut didn’t help the nausea rising in his gut or the dizzying magnitude of  _ Korriban _ , but it  _ did _ at least take his eyes off the others in the transport. Or… shuttle. Whatever it was called. Zal hadn’t bothered to investigate the particulars of the travel, not that he expected an answer if he tried.

No. Instead, he kept his eyes shut and focused on the churning in his stomach and the empty space in his head where  _ He _ used to be. So far away from the plant, the sort of prescient talent the man had seemed to have had flickered out, leaving a blank space in the back of his mind where he was used to feeling an unending pressure of malice.

Unnerving.

Never in his life had he ever had a completely empty, clear mind. He still didn’t, but that was mostly owed to whatever  _ Korriban _ was doing and to the people around him who would almost certainly be trying to kill him in only a few hours. Without the nagging, anxious pull in the back of his mind demanding he open up and be  _ aware _ , he’d have had an entirely empty head.  _ Peace _ for a moment. He was nearly there.

But they  _ were _ there. Their destination that is. No one in the shuttle knew peace, it buzzed with nervous energy that Zal found himself picking up on his clothes and just above his skin. They stuck to him and he frowned. A spark crawled up his spine and he shuddered. A horrible sensation he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to. It pulled the anxiety into his throat and clogged it for a moment, even as he tried to swallow the feeling away.

No, this was never going to be a calm, peaceful transport to Korriban’s surface, but they  _ had _ managed to make it to the shuttle pad with everyone in one piece.

The shuttle… transport…  _ whatever _ landed with a jolt, knocking a slender, short-haired girl from her seat and nearly unseating Zal as well. It was a real feat that he managed to stay in his place, especially as the smallest person in this glorified shipping crate.

His awareness pushed outwards, in a burst that didn't return the usual, useful slew of information back to him. Instead the Emptiness disoriented him and he opened his eyes. He would have to get used to having a mind of his own, untouched by a Sith's all-consuming presence or the unending, intuitive  _ knowing _ of the location and intent of said Sith. Apparently whatever bond had been struck, way back when Zal was too young to think or remember, it had a limit on distance.

Or it wasn't a bond at all, merely the presentation of power that never truly bloomed. Twenty-seven years wasn't  _ never _ , but it may as well have been for all the good it had done him so far.

Save from one death to be thrown into another. It was almost ironic. Or it could have been.

Something of that nature.

You haven't found death in toxic fumes that burned a voice to gravel. He hadn't found it hits deep in sludge that only released half as many souls as stepped in. He hadn't even found it in the noxious, caustic fogs that left little more than half-melted bone in their wake.

Korriban would kill him though, if he wasn't careful. Of all the things he lived through before, none would be so unpredictably dangerous as a planet of young, half-trained Sithlets.

Though, he supposed, he counted among them too. Perhaps not so young, not nearly to the extent the others were.

He hadn't really assessed the others, too busy inside his own head and heart to really give them more than a second glance. It seemed he missed his opportunity to, with the section of the wall that constituted the  _ door _ opening up as an exit ramp deployed. The armed… guards? Whatever. The  _ escort _ in charge of the transport demanded them all out.

Well. Nothing much he could do about  _ that _ beyond compliance. Doing as he was told would get him far, keep him alive… or it  _ wouldn’t _ and he’d be admonished for playing by some arbitrary set of rules and it would get him killed.

Hopefully not.

That would be… not ideal.  _ Probably _ the worst case scenario.

Hopefully.

A man could dream.

And he’d managed to fall into his own thoughts again. It was remarkably easy to get lost in there, even with the immediacy of Korriban and the Sith. It was  _ empty _ and there was so much space in his head, so many places to get caught in or fall into. Odd. Odd and inconvenient. It was imperative he was  _ present _ and that he was  _ prepared _ . Absentmindedness would likely end in his untimely death.

But Korriban was bright, and  _ enormous _ in ways that he’d never even dreamed of before. Stepping down the exit ramp, after the rest of the would-be acolytes, the planet tugged at him and tried to pull his awareness away. Even as a knot formed in his stomach and his thoughts were scattered about, the heavy stillness of the planet was  _ natural _ .

And it wasn’t even really  _ still _ . It was just  _ deep _ . The currents ran so far underneath it all that the surface seemed calm, like a sheet of ice on top of a whirlpool.

_ Is this what the end feels like? One crack and it would all fall through _ .

A rough push on his shoulder, someone trying to move  _ through _ him instead of just going around like someone reasonable, pulled his awareness back into himself. It sure liked to drift off, didn’t it? It was pulled out and off into-

No,  _ focus _ .

He frowned, cast a sharp glance to whatever had decided that going  _ through  _ a person was the easiest path, and then let the frown deepen.

The Pureblood kid. Right. Whatever his name would end up being, if he ever managed to find out. The important information concerned the fact that  _ this _ prospective acolyte hadn’t shown up as a product of being carted off from  _ slavery _ . This one was high class. Or something like that. There were so many classes above ‘legally not a person’ that it hardly mattered if someone was high or middle class, right?

Whatever. Either way, the Sith was  _ young _ and he was already practicing that hard, unrelenting edge that seemed so prevalent with all the Sith that Zal had had contact with to date. The young Sith returned Zal’s look with a sneer of his own, haughty and proud with an edge of something unidentifiable, but made no further comment. He simply continued walking, after the small cloud of almost-acolytes.

_ Oh _ , he was supposed to follow. It hit him a few moments after it probably should have, the small cluster of would-be-Sith and the young Pureblood were heading  _ towards _ the man at the end of the landing pad. They’d started to gather around him and were already being drilled.

_ Shit _ . Bad start on keeping a low profile and attempting to survive whatever  _ this _ was going to be.

Pulling his feet up from the floor was like pulling a ceramic bowl that hadn’t been touched in years up from a painted wooden shelf. There was resistance, and peeling himself from his place took more effort than it probably should have. Everything on Korriban was  _ difficult _ , and he hadn’t even been threatened yet. He let that feeling settle under his skin and resolved to ignore it, if he could, and instead broke into a jog to catch up to the group. Hopefully he wouldn’t get murdered for being scatter-brained like this. He’d hate to be the first example for the rest of the group. And he’d hate to get left behind through it.

“Ah, so he  _ finally _ decides to arrive.”

_ Fucking void alive _ .  _ Dammit. _

Zal stamped out the urge to make a low, frustrated noise. Barely. The urge to tip back his head and deflate with a throaty “ _ Eugh _ ” of dismay jumped to the forefront and refused to be pushed further back than the middle ground in his mind. No further back than  _ just _ beyond where he would have been acting on it.

_ Just be  _ **_safe,_ ** _ damn. Don’t throw the fight in the first four seconds _ .

The man was saying something, but it went in one ear and out the other. Nothing stuck quite in his head, but the name  _ Zash _ certainly did. It pulled him back to attention for a moment.

“Who is ‘Zash’?” Zal asked, cocking a brow and folding his arms in front of him.

“That is  _ Lord Zash _ to you,  _ slave _ ,” oh he  _ already _ felt irritation rise as the high-and-mighty man in front of him blathered something else insulting about her title, status, and importance. She was his boss, or had the  _ authority _ of his boss. Which was all he needed to know. He tuned out for a moment to push down the sharp sting of his emotions. Who knew what would happen if he snapped out.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be  _ good _ .

“You all know your tasks,” the man addressed the group, “Get to it while I bring our latecomer up to speed.”

Oh good, he wouldn’t be simply left in the dust to rot and crumble away. That girl he’d noted earlier, slight with short hair, paused as she walked past. Her face was anxious and kind,  _ gentle _ , which was strange. She was taller than him. It wasn’t difficult,  _ everyone _ was taller than him, but she seemed to pull her presence down to him so he wasn’t looking  _ up _ at her but  _ across _ to her.

“Watch your back, friend,” she spoke with that same softness, so young and so gentle. She’d probably noticed how much his mind was wandering off, how distracted he was, “And don’t worry, he  _ can’t _ kill us all.”

He thought for a moment, felt around for the right words, what would seem  _ appropriately _ Sith-like? What conveyed confidence in a way that didn’t sound like a desperate plea for that confidence to be real?

“A Sith fears no one.”

He regretted the words as soon as they came out. They tasted like  _ ash _ and he almost wanted to scrub his tongue with his fingers to get the sudden twisting of  _ wrong _ out of his mouth. He settled for using the roof of his mouth, hoping to scrape away how horrible it felt to speak like that. It was an abrasive, unpracticed tone and he wasn’t sure if he’d missed the mark, or hit it  _ too _ well.

The girl made a face, “Right. You keep at that.”

He grimaced in return, and her expression dropped again.

_ Right _ .

She went off, following the rest of the cluster and leaving him alone with the irritating, insulting man who was to direct him in his ‘trials to become Sith’ or whatever he’d called them a moment ago. They were tasks that he’d have to complete in order to survive, with nothing but himself, the odd sparking in his hands and heart, and a vibroblade. And this particular one, his first if he survived it, was to hunt down a man in the depths of a tomb.

_ Spindrall _ . An old hermit who lived and breathed the tombs. Evidently someone with the blessing of Zash, though the Overseer made it quite clear his own biases against him.

Find the hermit,  _ survive _ , and come back with his blessing. Although  _ how _ he was supposed to prove that he’d received such a thing from an old reclusive man in a  _ tomb _ \--the tomb of Ajunta Pall in the Valley of the Dark Lords, the Overseer had already said  _ twice _ perhaps in hopes of making it stick--went over his head. Maybe it had been said already, and he’d missed it, or maybe it hadn’t and he was just not going to find out until he got there.

In either case, it made no difference what his next course of action would have to be. Find the man, talk to him, and survive it. One foot in front of the other.

“I will do my best to find and please Spindrall,” he said, trying a new approach. His tongue still tasted of half-burned fire and rot, and the passive obedience felt wrong too, but it wasn’t nearly the visceral disgust that the Sith answer had been. The Overseer said something else he didn’t pay attention to, and dismissed him.

Zal hurried out. He didn’t run, but he certainly didn’t  _ walk _ either. Staying near Overseer Whoever any longer than necessary was just  _ asking _ to get fried, and he’d already earned the man’s ire by  _ existing _ and then exacerbated it by being spacey and inattentive. The quicker he got out, the better.

So he did. He took off out the door and off the landing pad. Suddenly his feet were on metal grating, not on the solid, heavy slab of  _ whatever _ that had been the landing area. The sound of his boots on the floor took on a higher, pinging tone and he finally got a good,  _ solid _ look at the planet.

_ Bloody hells, this place is huge, _ he thought to himself, and approached the railing in front of him. He gripped it with both his hands and lifted his head, craned it back to stare at the ancient ruins of the tomb and the blowing sand of the desert. He hadn’t really been prepared for the enormity of it all. He  _ knew _ , logically and conceptually, that Korriban was a  _ planet _ and that to have space for an entire academy for Sith it would have to be bigger than anything he’d ever known before.

That didn’t prepare him for the  _ reality _ of it though. It was one thing to know and hear of something, and another thing entirely to  _ see it _ , or more accurately to  _ experience _ it. Being here, being on Korriban and feeling the chilled wind on his face and the cold seeping into his hands from the metal railing… it was  _ brutally _ real.

It was brutally real, and it was  _ there _ .  _ Waiting _ for him. A shiver ran down his spine and a spark crawled across his cheek before it disappeared into nothingness again. More danced across the tops of his knuckles and he shuddered. It left an odd feeling behind on the top of his skin. He shook the feeling out of his hands and then dragged a hand across his face to fix it. It wasn’t  _ painful _ , but it wasn’t  _ comfortable _ either. He’d rather not think too hard on what it meant, to know it was coming from himself.

Not when there was a tomb to explore.

He shook out his hands again, flapping them downwards and out experimentally as if to toss the excess energy away, to shake out some of the anticipation before it could overwhelm him. It seemed to work. It at least gathered the energy into his hands enough as to pull a knot out of his chest that he hadn’t even realized had formed. He shook his hands harder, burned off some of the energy for a moment and took a deep, clear breath. It pulled him back into himself, better than being knocked into had.

That was something to file away for later, he decided, and bounced on his toes a moment.

His head clear, his chest free, and his hands vibrating with an energy he could only describe as  _ excitement _ , even if it didn’t even begin to encompass it, he drummed a quick, staccato beat into the metal railing and took the first steps down the grated stairs.

The tomb awaits.


	2. Korriban:  First Steps Into The Tomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No beta we die like men.
> 
> Zal manages to get himself some networking in, and the beginnings of some training.

“ _ Damn it all! _ _ Why _ does this have to be so  _ hard _ ?! What even  _ are  _ these?”

He  _ didn’t _ know how to fight, and he  _ hadn’t _ been prepared any further than being given a vibroblade and sent on his way. He gripped the hilt in his left hand and kept his right in front of him, a small concentration of sparks weaving between his fingers and focusing just in front of his palm.

_ A Sith fears no one _ \-  **_bullshit_ ** **.** If he was going to end up a Sith, then Sith feared  _ quite a lot _ thank you very much. Being Sith  _ was _ anxiety, as far as Zal was concerned, and that anxiety was aimed  _ directly _ at whatever this giant, writhing mass of Native Korriban Horribleness was. He might, at one point, have been properly intrigued by such a thing’s existence and perhaps even been delighted at the chance to look at it, however when it was trying to kill him it killed the enthusiasm.  _ Proximity _ killed whatever interest that had been piqued at a distance when he’d first seen them.

He hacked through it and flicked his hand, throwing a small, twisting spear of sparks at the thing until it died, then he took off. More would show up if he stood around too long, and he’d learned that particular lesson the hard way when one had snuck up behind him and got him in the leg.

He’d found a discarded kolto medkit nearby, so he’d slapped a patch on and kept moving. He was lucky, he was a good enough runner that he could sustain a steady pace for enough time to get in and out of a place. He was small, with not a lot to ferry around on him besides the vibroblade, which was heavy but not unmanageably so.

He’d also found an undershirt, which was,  _ odd _ , and he’d rather not think on  _ why _ there was a discarded undershirt in a monster-infested tomb, but it was long-sleeved and it had a hood, so he’d found an abandoned, dusty,  _ lifeless _ corner of an alcove and stripped out of his tunic and undershirt to put on the new one. Amazingly, it fit. Sure, it was a little long and the sleeves bunched up around his wrists, but the point was practicality.

Korriban had a cold, dry climate, and even running around he was starting to feel the absence of proper  _ sleeves _ in the clothing he was shuffled to Korriban in. Sure the tunic had  _ some _ sleeves, that were wide and comfortable enough, but they were  _ short _ sleeves and bare arms in a cold desert would do him no good.

He pulled the tunic back on and secured it again, pulling the hood of the undershirt through the neck of the tunic so it could sit ready to use without having to waste time fumbling with it later. He thought for a moment that he’d have to abandon the old undershirt where he’d changed, but it only took him another quiet second of thought to remember that clothing could be tucked into his belt, and in fact that is what belts were for.

Granted, perhaps not in the way he was doing it, but the intentions behind the article didn’t matter as much as his reluctance to let the cloth go. Could be useful.

Or it wouldn’t be, and he’d just lug around a scrap of fabric for no reason.

No harm in either, really.

He shook his hand, shook it free of the lingering Force energy and shook out the nerves that had settled in along his back. It freed up another clearer breath and a fuzzy, detached sense that he hadn’t realized had been creeping into his head was dispelled.

_ Ha, checkmate, brain _ , he huffed a small laugh and strapped his vibroblade to his back,  _ You’re staying right here _ .

That settled as it was, he poked his head out of the alcove and put a hand up against the cold, stone wall to lean on. He tapped his fingers on it, lightly, making no more sound than the softest of thumps. He hummed a low, steady sound for a moment and then made his way out.

Coast clear.

Even so, he still kept himself to the wall, nearly pressed up against it. A shame he couldn’t simply slip past the infesting fauna, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that besides shocking them from a distance and hoping he could kill them with electricity before they got to him, though that hadn’t  _ actually _ happened yet. He could keep trying.

Surprisingly, Zal found that running away between the little buildups of Force, maintaining distance as best he could, proved an effective method of fighting. Already he was falling into a rhythm that kept him mostly out of reach while trying to cut a path through the rotten-smelling bugs. If they were even bugs. Whatever they were they were  _ foul _ .

It wasn’t too long, nor too far along that he found a slapped-together camp, free of the odd fauna and manned by an Imperial military man and two Sith who were particularly disinterested in whatever was happening outside their little make-shift blockade.

Zal figured approaching the military man first, considering he was  _ closer _ to the set of stairs that he’d descended to reach the small camp than either of the Sith were, and the two Sith were engrossed in whatever  _ they _ were doing. Nothing that particularly concerned him, surely. Granted, the soldier was also doing something, looking out over the stacked crates with his blaster rifle drawn and trained on a  _ much _ larger population of the bugs than Zal had encountered thus far, but he also seemed the least likely to kill him for saying something out of turn.

As he walked up, stepping barely into the man’s space before he turned around and stowed the rifle, he tilted his head a little to the side and watched how steadily the man moved. He was trained, better prepared for this than Zal was.

“Excuse me, acolyte,” Zal blinked at the address, it was  _ respectful _ , and the man called him  _ acolyte _ . A change of pace, “Sergeant Cormun, Fifth Infantry Division, Korriban    
Regiment. Can I- Can I talk to you?”

Zal blinked again, looking up at the soldier for a moment longer than perhaps necessary, but the corners of his mouth twitched up. 

“I- yes, of course,” he breathed, then cleared his throat and spoke louder, less like he’d been caught with something he shouldn’t have, “Speak freely, Sergeant.”

“You’re one of the slaves that Harkun brought in on the last transport, right? Here proving yourself to those bloodthirsty Overseers?”

Cormun was friendlier than Zal had anticipated, from the impression he’d gotten from just looking at his back for a minute, and his tone was nothing but curiously amicable.

Zal snorted and crossed his arms in front of him, “Harkun? Is that his name? Evidently so, though. It’s prove myself capable of being Sith or die, apparently. I’m not sure I like those options much, but I’d rather not die so here I am.”

He shrugged, a resigned, nearly flippant motion that made the Sergeant chuckle and give him a knowing look, tempered by a pensive something or other that hid in his eyes but didn’t reach the rest of his face.

“Well, you’re in luck I suppose. Here’s a chance to show off to the Overseers, and not only that but start networking as well- Building ties with the Imperial military, I mean. See, I’m here commanding a hard target mission, exteriminating the k’lor’slugs in this tomb-”

“Is that what they’re called? K’lor’slugs?” Zal interrupted, his own curiosity pushing over what could be considered the rather more urgent matter of whatever the Sergeant was  _ really _ trying to get across. “I was wondering what those were, got a nasty enough bite in any case.”

“The monstrous squirming things in here? Yes, those are K’lor’slugs. They’re… horrific things. Mouths as big as your head, though I suppose you know that by now,” Sergeant Cormun looked Zal up and down, and took in the hastily applied kolto and bandage on his leg, “I’ve lost three whole squads fighting them. Good men. They come in packs and they just-”

The man looked like he’d turn deathly shade of green any moment, his lips pressed into a tight, nauseated line.

“Yes. I understand,” if the soldier couldn’t manage to say it, then he didn’t need to put himself through the mental effort to force himself purely for Zal’s benefit. Zal nodded his head slowly, matched the pensive look with one of his own, “They’re brutal creatures.”

Cormun hissed a breath from between his teeth and muttered, mostly to himself, “You can say that again.”

“It looks,” Zal ventured, “like you might need some help with your k’lor’slug problem.”

“Please. The damn things breed so fast that there’s no way to wipe them out conventionally. It’s a horrible infestation, and it’s interfering with what the Sith want to do here. So we started targeting their egg chambers.”

“Oh, I bet  _ that _ went over well.”

“As well as you expect. They went insane. We even managed to get explosives to all of the egg chambers, but they were on us before they could be detonated. If you want to help, you just need to get in, set off the explosives, and get out. Nothing more than that.”

It seemed simple enough, and Zal informed the man as such. Not the most intensive or terrifying thing he’d done in the past few weeks, considering just a few weeks ago he was knee-deep in toxic sludge or running past caustic materials that burned to breath on a daily basis, and this week he was confronted with the need to compete for the  _ privilege _ of being taught by a Sith Lord.

Truly, arming a package of explosives and then making an expedient retreat might not even make the top 10 on his ‘most dangerous acts’ list.

That probably shouldn’t have been something he could claim.

That… was probably a bad sign. Already.

It spoke at least a little to his own survivability, but it really seemed to speak more to just how many times he likely  _ should _ have died.

Hmm.

He filed that away for later. Or never. Whichever, it didn’t  _ really _ matter that much.

He blinked. Cormun was staring at him, giving him a concerned look. Ah shit, he’d probably spaced out again.  _ Fantastic _ .

He gave his best, most sane and  _ hopefully _ reassuring smile, though judging by Cormun’s expression he missed the mark by a  _ lot _ , and confirmed again his intention to help with the k’lor’slug problem. The withering look he got was followed closely behind by an almost reluctant nod and a last piece of imparted advice, “Don’t underestimate those k’lor’slugs, sir. They’re… smarter than they look.”

Zal nodded and gave a shoddy, half-attempted salute and turned away. That… could have gone better.

He took a few steps out into the wider room, just past the--barricade? Barricade worked as much as any other word--and stepped on something hard that crumbled underfoot with a crunch. He cast his eyes down, not many things gave way like that with such a dramatic sound and-

“That- that is a skeleton.”

A human skeleton, even.  _ Fun _ .

“Right. Skeleton,” he stepped back, away from it a pace and then crouched.

_ This is probably a  _ **_terrible_ ** _ idea _ , he thought to himself, poking at the bones anyways. He picked up one part of the bone he’d stepped on, a piece of a leg, broken into two bits. He hefted in his hand for a moment, feeling the weight of it and turning it over before he tossed it to his other one. He picked up a small handful of the crumbling bone dust too, rubbed it between his fingers and hummed his thoughts.

He looked back at the hunk of bone in his hand, thought for a moment, and then pulled that arm back. He threw the piece of the leg bone as hard as he could, and watched it club a k’lor’slug in what he assumed was the head.

It reared up and looked around for the source of the pain, and zeroed in on  _ him _ .

“Ah. Bad idea. I was right on  _ that _ ,” he scrambled to his feet and readied himself, unhooking the vibroblade from his back.

He took a breath and shook his shoulders free of nervous energy. Better to have that energy in his palm, where it sparked to life in the Force. He still wasn’t sure what the mechanics of that were, or how he managed it, but he could pull at the feeling and shake it into existence.

He had time before the k’lor’slug reached him, so he pulled at that nebulous, unpleasant emotion and let it build. It  _ wanted _ to build, with or without him, and he let it. His hand sparked with it, and around his forearm came the tingling of  _ power _ he supposed, small and a line to something deep in him.

A spike of fear crawled up into his throat. He didn’t try to shut it down, and instead let it choke him a moment before letting it out through his hand, through the sparks. A small bolt that tore through the k’lor’slug and caused it to cry out with an awful screech. He grimaced and followed up with another, smaller spark as it closed in on him... and it died.

It didn’t take a single clumsy swing of the vibroblade, he’d done it all from a distance.

_ Brilliant _ .

He was starting to get the hang of it, of tugging at that little spark. At that part inside that had cracked open and spilled its contents out into the rest of him. It was a slow tearing down of walls he'd never noticed or addressed, but that had come into his awareness after a corner of those walls had been blown up. There was work to do, to deconstruct what had been built up, but he was going to try.

" _ You _ , acolyte."

He flinched slightly and followed the voice to its source, looking to the side to see one of the Sith leaned over a crate. Their hand was on a stone tablet, with their other hand rifling absently through a few datapads. They scrolled through each one restlessly, clearly looking for  _ something _ but not really paying that close of attention.

No, instead they had their eyes on Zal. They tilted their head and beckoned him over, lifting one hand barely from its place to wave him over with the smallest of motions from their finger.

"Acolyte, come here. You've something to learn from me."

He took a few slow, cautious steps closer and the Sith rolled their eyes, "Like you have a  _ purpose _ , please. You haven't got all day and neither do I. Your apprehension is not the most important thing on my agenda today and  _ you _ certainly haven't the time for it."

And so he did, he approached with, if not more confidence than at least more  _ speed _ , and the Sith put their hand amicably on his shoulder, "Have you a name, acolyte? A full one, preferably. If you've got one of course, I don't much enjoy  _ numbers _ as names. There's already words in mathematics, I don't need it the other way around."

"I- yes, my Lord. My name is Zal-hessah Vooretta," the name was… odd to say himself. It had been too long since he'd last spoken his own name. It had been spoken  _ to _ him often enough, but he hadn't said it himself nearly so much.

The Sith patted his cheek twice and slung their arm around his shoulders, "Gorgeous. That's workable. Rolls off the tongue," they quirked a brow at him, "Did you choose it yourself? Was it given?"

"My… someone I knew chose it for me," he shrugged, as best he could with Sith arms around his shoulders, "I thought he chose well, so I kept it."

The Sith hummed an agreement, "He had good taste, it suits you. I am Vibrance. And  _ you _ ," the punctuated this by prodding Zal's collar bone with their free hand, "are  _ weird _ . So let's talk."

He didn't really get a chance to respond before he was pushed into Vibrance's workstation, hauled around by their physicality, both on a literal and an odd, more emotional level. They were… strange. Grasping at anything that wasn't  _ boredom _ , apparently, and he'd stumbled along at the right time to catch their interest.

He stole one last glance back, in Sergeant Cormun's direction, and he caught the man's tired, pitying, dead stare.

_ Oh well  _ **_that's_ ** _ reassuring _ .  _ Fan-fucking-tastic _ .

If nothing else, he was more present than he had been all day. It could have been the touch, or it could have been the sheer presence that this Sith had, but his thoughts hadn’t tried to escape and drift off even once since they’d first laid a hand on him. It wasn’t quite  _ danger _ , though he was very  _ very _ distinctly aware of the sort of peril this presented. He was in direct physical contact with a Sith who had  _ much _ more training than him. Who wanted to teach him something. And who thought he was weird enough to be worthwhile to talk to if only to break the clearly dull monotony of their life.

And they hadn’t introduced themself as a Lord, though it was abundantly clear that they’d long surpassed the need for the Academy as a place of learning for  _ themself _ . They were just… weird.

They bumped his hip with their upper thigh, shuffling him over another few paces and then getting down into his space.

“Right, so you’ve got a little,” they tapped the side of their own nose twice with a finger and gestured vaguely in place of an actual  _ noun _ though they seemed to expect it to work like that anyways, “and it’s keeping you from  _ really _ bringing out what you’re capable of.  _ You _ need to stop holding back on yourself.”

“I’m… not?” he responded slowly, confused as he looked Vibrance up and down. Their presence pulled him in, made him look them properly in the eyes and into their doubtful gaze. A spark crawled over his shoulder and dissipated, but not before it caught their eye.

“First: You are, so don’t lie to yourself. Second: You hold the Force in your right hand, like it’s the only place it can be held. That’s not correct. If you’re pulling the power from your heart, from that place between your shoulders that you keep flexing and stretching, then you don’t have to hold it in your  _ hand _ at all. It’s a good focus, a good way to pull your intentions into one action and execute the action you want, but you’re limiting yourself by doing it like that. At least by  _ only _ doing it like that,” they stepped behind him and gripped his shoulder in one hand, almost hard enough to hurt, “You can pull the power up from your core, and you can put  _ more _ into that spot you focus at. You’re too scared of hurting yourself with it, you  _ won’t _ .”

They thumped him between the shoulder blades, a solid, firm strike to the spine with their flat palm, “ _ There _ . Feel where that is, put your mind there, and put your  _ fear _ there. You’re tense. Put it there.”

They struck the spot again in a sharply precise motion, then twice more, until they were satisfied.

“Feel that? Feel where that is? Now relax your shoulders. Don’t relax that little  _ node _ , but relax your shoulders. You should be able to hold that tension without hurting yourself physically.”

He tried, but forcing the muscles to relax was harder than they made it sound and he turned his head back to get them somewhat back into view, “I’m not sure I understand-”

“You will,” and they gripped down hard on his shoulder, digging into the junction between his neck and shoulder with their fingers and pushing their other thumb into a point on his back that blistered suddenly with a pain that startled him into a yelp.

But his back and shoulders relaxed, and that point of tension he’d managed to focus on remained. To hold the tension through the forced relaxation was disorienting, and if he hadn’t been so focused on maintaining that node of tension--that node of  _ power _ as he was coming to recognize it--he’d have been knocked off his feet by the warring sensations.

“ _ What _ -”

“There we are,” they relaxed their grip and rolled his shoulders back, pulling them and pressing gently on his lower back, correcting his posture, “You have it. Now you can  _ use it _ .”

“I- what did-  _ what? _ That’s-” he stuttered through his words, unable to quite pull together a solid concept while he felt, physically and in the back of his mind, the part of him that hummed with energy.

Vibrance laughed.

“Works everytime. You have a hold of it now, don’t you?”

“ _ Yes _ , but how did-”

They put their finger to his lips, silencing him, and lowered their head down to shush him for extra measure, “That’s  _ my  _ secret. You’ll have to read up on it later.”

He hummed, finding out where to get that sort of information was perhaps not on the top of his list of to-do’s. It could be added, potentially, but there wasn’t too much room for curiosity when he was trying his best not to die.

“Now,” Vibrance continued, evidently not  _ done _ with their lesson, “Let it rise to the surface. Let that tension and power touch your skin from the inside. Push it if you have to, but get it there. It can fill you, if you let it.  _ Let it _ .”

“I’m unclear-”

“ _ Shh _ , you need to  _ let go _ . You’re holding it down in your head, now relax.”

Well, with  _ that _ kind of instruction… he tried. Some of the tension he was holding, completely in his head now that his back and shoulders had been beaten into submission, he let it go. He breathed out and took over a minute to peel away at the odd need for  _ control _ in his chest. He felt it, felt that blip of power get closer to the surface, until it touched his skin from the inside like Vibrance had said.

Lightning crawled across his skin, up his neck and across his back and arms, circling him and touching down sporadically. It left a revolting feeling in its wake, and the impulse to push it back down, to shudder and shake off the power that crawled in and around him, overwhelmed him. He pushed it back, pushed it  _ down _ , and for a moment the sparks died.

“ **_No_ ** ,” Vibrance growled in his ear and gripped his jaw tight between their fingers, “Let it come, let it  _ surface _ . You can’t push it down and expect to get any better, and expect to  _ survive _ . You need to feel this.”

Fear spiked in his heart, and the power lit up on his skin with a renewed vigor.

“ _ Good _ , you’re scared. Use it. Fear makes you fast, keeps you on your toes. If you can find the calm at the center of the fear, learn how to breathe while you’re drowning, you’ll never fall. Never,” they tightened their grip and touched a finger to his throat, a feather-light brush of skin that made the blood rush in his ears and his breath quicken, “You have to be able to fight, not in spite of fear, but because of it. When your mind and heart abandon you, you must be able to stand alone as will. Because the people around you will kill you if you can’t.”

It was harrowing, almost exhilarating really which was strange. Maybe not so strange, but it still struck him that he could be so thoroughly terrified and yet  _ trust _ what this Sith was telling him. They were a grounding force, and they were using that to pull apart his reserve.

A hell of a teaching method, to be sure.

Harkun wasn't interested in teaching the pack, only thinning it, Zal could see that already. But Vibrance had decided that he'd be learning something today.

"Zal-hessah. I need you to push up, push  _ out _ . Let it overwhelm you. It  _ will _ overwhelm you, make no mistake. But you need to keep pushing. Don't stop until it stops burning."

" _ Burning? _ " he didn't hide his alarm, but their finger tapped his throat again and he swallowed. 

_ Right _ .  _ Don't piss off the Sith. Do as you're told. _

"You're not used to it. It will hurt and it will hurt in a place you're not likely to have been hurt before. It will hurt less the next time, and the next, until it is as natural as breathing. Now  _ do it _ ."

"Do I have a  _ goal _ ?"

His interjection was… in part  _ stalling _ , but the rest of it was very much a need for structure, and he felt more than heard Vibrance's pause.

They hummed in his ear, thoughtful, "Your goal is to  _ push _ . To push away. Overwhelm yourself and overload, and push  _ out _ with all of it. It is to keep your enemies at a distance and knock them off-balance." 

“So  _ push _ ?”

“So push. Overwhelm yourself as fast as you can and then  _ push _ .” 

He felt them nod behind him and he sucked in a pensive breath.  _ Push _ . That was the goal. Pull everything up from inside, let it reach the surface, and just, get  _ lost _ in the push. He could do that. That would be manageable.

Maybe.

He hoped it’d be manageable at least. Still, he dropped himself into the feeling. And if it wasn’t manageable, well, he supposed that was the  _ point _ now wasn’t it?

Vibrance was right about how overwhelming it would be, especially since he was trying to do it on purpose. Already, just the sensation of the sparks crawling across him made his stomach twist, and his breath caught in his throat on the knot of nausea.

He wanted to cling to the way that Vibrance’s hand stayed on his jaw, on the way it kept his mind where it was supposed to be and grounded him in reality. The physical touch kept him in his own head and present in the world, and if he dropped himself too far into that small blip of power under his skin he felt like it would fall away. He’d lose himself in it.

And then they let go.

“Lose yourself,” they hummed, and stepped away.


	3. Korriban: A Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did I really just spend a whole ass chapter with a character that won't show up again for a Fuckin Long Ass Time if at all? Yep.

To be submerged in yourself, to have your mind fall away so completely while you are plunged into heat and fire and flame. It burns like nothing else. It pulls at the heart and the stars and if you had enough mind to think you’d only think of the horror. But you haven’t the mind and you barely even have the heart. Only the sensation.

Overwhelmed is the only word there is for that kind of experience, and the power bubbled up around him as though it  _ boiled _ . It made it hard to breathe, and it burned on his skin. He wasn’t even sure if this was the burning that Vibrance had talked about, if it was the extent of what he would have to deal with.

He could only wonder on it briefly. The bubbling scattered his thoughts and broke apart coherency.

It burned to fall into it, to have awareness stolen so thoroughly but then- then it  _ didn’t _ burn anymore. Or it didn’t feel like burning, it just felt…  _ strong _ . A built-up wall of something undefinable but  _ solid _ . He could  _ move _ it. It was an extension of himself and he could  _ move it _ for himself.

“Now  _ push _ .”

And he did, he pushed out. He didn’t have Vibrance’s hands to force his body and mind to obey, but he didn’t  _ need _ it. He only needed himself.  _ He only needed himself _ .

It was a concussive wave of force that came off of him then, in the next moment. It was forced out in a wave of power and the solidity didn’t falter even as it left him. It had  _ impact _ .

A k’lor’slug that had been slowly approaching, mostly unconscious of its proximity to the small camp and unbothered with finding anything more than something else to eat, was thrown back suddenly, several meters. It lay there, dazed, for a moment before it righted itself and looked around, intent on finding the source of its pain.

Zal laughed, a soft, breathy sound that escaped him. He stared at the k’lor’slug in disbelief. He’d  _ done _ that. He’d fallen into feeling and he’d been able to  _ move it _ . And move other things. It was real, and it was real in a way he could  _ manipulate _ .

He put a hand over his mouth and laughed again, an edge of hysteria creeping into it and for the first time in a  _ long _ time, in too long, he felt a real smile pull itself across his lips. It wasn’t one he put on himself. A full-fledged, natural smile on his face as he laughed harder.

“I  _ did _ that,” he whispered, and turned to face Vibrance.

They had an equally wide grin plastered on their face, and they seemed to brighten even under the darkness of their hood.

“Excellent! Good man! Now you’ve got it!” they grabbed his shoulder and shook it with glee, “You can see it, you  _ felt _ it, and now you can  _ move _ it.”

  
“What  _ was _ that?” he asked, and gave the Sith a look of wonder.

“ _ You _ . That was  _ you _ . You are stronger than you seem.”

Then they pushed him, turned him around with the hand they had on his shoulder and shoved him out into the open. In full view of the k’lor’slug he’d pushed back.

What.

“ _ What. _ ”

And the k’lor’slug was on him.

He swung his vibroblade-- _ had he really been holding it that entire time _ ?--and stumbled backwards, gathering the sparking node of power into his hand.

“Both hands! Your weapon can take it, you can use your left hand too!” Vibrance called out to him, now perched on their workbench, happily.

Both hands?

"You can use your dominant hand, vibroblades like that are designed to take the power of the Force. Take it, pull up from yourself, and let it  _ loose _ !”

Well, if they said so.

So he pulled, backed away a few more paces and gathered the energy into either palm. That his vibroblade had started crackling with electricity was hardly as much of a concern as the k’lor’slug in front of him. He kept pulling, until both hands were alight with the Force and his hands were caught between oversensitivity and numbness.

“ _ Good _ , now let it go. Keep pulling but let it  _ go _ ,” Vibrance leaned forwards, watching him with their hawk-like gaze, instructing him still.

It took a great deal of effort, to keep his mind present to focus and to keep his grip on the power. For a moment it seemed impossible, but there was a nagging anxiety in the back of his throat, a curl of tension at the base of his neck that reminded him of Vibrance’s insistence on using fear. He didn’t  _ need _ to keep his mind present, he just had to be able to make do  _ without _ . Through how much he  _ wanted _ it, it seemed. If that was what  _ will _ was.

He shook out his hand and shrugged his shoulders back into a comfortable place, just a moment to take that breath. The breath of calm in the middle of a drowning storm…  _ He _ could be the storm.

He could be the  _ storm _ . It clicked, two pieces of a puzzle fitting together. He didn’t need to breathe through the drowning if he was the cause of it.

And so he pushed, determined to be that natural force that could crush the things around him. He pushed the energy through his hands, both of them, until he couldn’t hold it to just his hands anymore. They pushed out and away from each other, easier to hold out to his sides than in front of him.

The Force felt directionless like this, but he found that it wasn’t, not entirely that is. It felt like chaos, like the scattering of ice that had hit the ground from a great height, shattered, and scattered. It also followed his direction, he could wrap it in what he wanted,  _ direct _ it so it centered on a point if he wanted it badly enough. It poured out of him, and still he drew from that point of power within him, and focused it on the k’lor’slug in front of him.

The lightning obeyed and struck like a storm around the animal, with smaller wayward lightningstrikes falling all around him. It obeyed and caused  _ pain _ , but it wasn’t Zal’s pain, and he didn’t stop until the slug was good and dead.

Cutting off the power was another strange experience, his hands tingled with power and he stumbled, his feet hitting the ground oddly. Wait… _hitting the ground?_ _Had he really gone off the ground?_

Well, whatever. Vibrance’s delighted claps as an empty fatigue dragged his posture down gave enough of a good feeling that he didn’t really  _ need _ to know what he’d done. He’d done it right, and that’s what mattered.

They came up and put their hands on him again, guiding him back to their workstation and pushing him to sit on the bench. They put an uncapped bottle of something in his hand and dropped a piece of fruit in his lap too.

The Sith crouched next to him,  _ beaming _ .

“How did that  _ feel _ ? The first storm like that is  _ so _ satisfying, I think. Oh but how did it  _ feel _ ?” he could hardly keep up with how fast they were talking, and talk they did. They continued, hardly  _ really _ asking for his input while also encouraging him to take a drink from the bottle or take a few bites of the fruit they’d given him.

When he’d taken a few swallows from the bottle, something odd and sugary, and gotten the sudden sandpaper feeling off his tongue he started to laugh again, “That was  _ incredible _ .”

Vibrance stood--they towered over him at this angle--and put their hands on either side of his face, holding his cheeks. The look they gave him was… unnerving. An unsettling, almost  _ hungry _ look in their eyes as they smiled, but he couldn’t find himself to be distrustful of it.

“I  _ knew _ you’d be interesting,” they whispered with a chuckle, “You’ll go far. I can’t  _ wait _ to see where you end up. If it weren’t for Zash I would claim you right now, there wouldn’t be a word anyone could say to stop me. You have  _ so much _ to give and I can’t wait to see it all.”

They were almost breathless with their excitement, and they let their hands drop down to his shoulders, forcing themself to relax a bit. Vibrance nodded, firm and resolute, “You’ll go far. To teach you eternally would be a dream, but that is not my place in this life. If ever you want to learn from me again, you are free to return.”

And they dropped their hands entirely, pulled away and with them took the grounding they provided. But Zal found he didn’t need it as much, and he shook his hand out to bring himself just to a level he could comfortably handle. He dipped his head, and stood from his place. When he tried to give the bottle of sugary drink back to Vibrance, they closed his hand tighter around it, told him to keep it, and stepped away.

“Thank you,” he told them, and turned. He still had an old hermit to find.


	4. Korriban: Getting Lost in a Tomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zal gets Lost and gets Angery because he can't find the fckn room with Spindrall aka the hour I spent wandering the tomb the first time i ever played swtor is getting put in this novelization bc I am _still_ salty about it. (not really, it's funnier than it is infuriating. It's the dumbest shit i spent an HOUR lost in this STRAIGHT LINE of a tomb)

Finding his way through the tomb was _harrowing_ . Zal had managed to step on _another_ corpse, though he’d thankfully kept his impulses in line and only picked over it for a moment instead of just throwing bits of bone into the distance. There was a datapad beside it that he briefly flipped through, skimming the words for anything _actually_ useful. There was also a bag, a simple over-the-shoulder thing with a strap that could be tightened or loosened to a convenient length and had a little tie-down for the flap.

Good to know they’d sent down whoever _this_ had been with _supplies_ at least, and the area had been infested thoroughly enough with k’lor’slugs that the bag had remained un-pilfered. Until now that is.

He wrestled the bag off the corpse and slung it over his head to rest on his shoulder, and spent some time fiddling with the strap, to make it shorter. It was a barely comfortable length, he found, as short as he could get it. Apparently no one had ever considered that some people are _small_ before.

Eh. Whatever. If it worked, it worked. And it looked like it was going to.

He stowed the dead person’s datapad in his newly looted bag, and kept moving.

Trying to find his way through the tomb was _also_ an excellent way to get lost. Go figure, an undoubtedly ancient _burial_ site wouldn’t be intuitive to find a way through.

He kept to the walls mostly. Again. It was quicker to creep around the edges of the rooms and chambers and halls than to get caught in a fight in the middle of them. He avoided fighting as much as he could, but found himself right where he'd started more than once.

After swearing quietly to himself, he ducked behind some crumbling hunks of wall. He _probably_ should have picked up a holomap somewhere. That would have made this a lot easier.

There were a _lot_ of things that would have made this a lot easier. One of them being _any_ indication of which way he was supposed to go. He’d managed, at one point, to find the egg chamber of the k’lor’slugs and detonate the charges, but then he’d gone and gotten lost again.

He was running on limited time as it was, as far as he knew. Not that he’d been given a _deadline_ or anything, just a goal, but he figured if he didn’t get it done in a reasonable enough time he’d end up dead anyways, just for wasting Harkun’s time. And he’d already pissed off the man enough.

By existing.

There probably wasn’t anything that he would be able to do to make the man happy, but he could at least try.

And to top it all off, the tomb was _absurdly_ full of looters. An abhorrent amount of random people and pirates that had managed to hole up and _maintain ground_ in the tomb, like this wasn’t the home planet of the Sith and a central seat of power for the Empire. If this hadn’t been simply _allowed_ by the Academy, he’d toss the scavenged datapad into the nearest trash receptacle, half-useful information, and potential for notes storage and all.

If it had been, it would make sense. If it _hadn’t_ , then it made no sense not to loose however many Sithlets they had up in that academic nightmare into the tomb to massacre the invading parties. Perhaps there was an element of subtlety he didn’t understand, or a drawback to throwing what was more than likely several dozen half-trained Sith children at _least_ into the tomb.

Actually, scratch that. There were _several_ drawbacks to that kind of thing. One of which being the drawbacks of sending _stupid_ half-trained Sith children into that sort of environment. The sort of environment that didn’t handle being angrily slashed at with vibroblades and lightsabers well, and the kind where that sort of behavior would be detrimental to the health of the historical artifacts.

Or whatever. Don’t send a gaggle of dumb kids into a tomb and expect them not to break something. That was probably more likely than ‘we refuse to take back the tombs because we don’t want to’.

At least that was the _hope_. He’d hate to lose that kind of bet.

… A bet he’d made with himself. He didn’t _actually_ have to follow through and trash the datapad if he didn’t want to. That would be _actually_ ridiculous, and he didn’t have the kind of pride that would make him hold himself to such a stupid hyperbolic _thought._

Zal dragged a hand down his face, sighed heavily into his palm, and sat down on a rock.

This tomb sucked. It just _sucked_ . It was confusing, laid out like a labyrinth, but relatively small and probably not _actually_ very labyrinthine, so he was starting to feel _stupid_ for how long it was taking him to find Spindrall’s little hideout.

“If I just had a _map_ ,” he grumbled, entirely to himself, “This would be _easier._ ”

Granted, he was fairly certain that having a map would make him feel _more_ stupid. This was potentially easier than it seemed, and he was just _fantastic_ at getting himself lost and getting turned around.

He kicked a rock, or what had once been a chunk of a wall before it had crumbled away into a delightfully kickable size and shape. It didn’t go far, and he didn’t feel better, but at least he’d kicked it.

Well, he couldn’t sit there _moping_ forever. The tombs on Korriban took people apart, and consumed them from the inside out if they were left too long at the mercy of the planet’s pull. He didn’t intend to be one of those people. He’d find the old hermit, and he’d find a way out. And maybe he’d even ask the man for a map, because why _not._ At this point, his day likely couldn’t get any more frustrating or weird.

He stood from his place and took a deep breath. Just keep going.

\--------------------

Okay, actually, fuck _this_.

Fuck this hallway, fuck this tomb, fuck those _rooms,_ and _especially_ fuck Harkun and his dumb shit task to find shit in a dumb tomb without even _one_ fucking map.

Zal thought himself, at least as much as he could, to be a relatively reasonable person. Not that he had a terribly good metric for it, considering his upbringing and the solid amount of trauma he was _sure_ to have by now, and by the end of this, but if he saw _one more room of looters-_

"Oh for the love of- fuck _me_ , _really_?"

More Force-damned _looters_. Looters who were very much alarmed by the small, angry man who had just stalked into the room and yelled at them with as much incredulity as he could muster. 

They stared wide-eyed at him for a moment before they broke out of their confusion.

“Get him!”

He shot them a look, a look that spoke of his drastically waning patience. Just one more, _one_ more look, one more moment of frustrating bantha shit. _Just one more_.

The looters hesitated for a moment, but only a moment before a different one called for his head again.

They were _asking_ for it, and frankly even if they weren’t, Zal couldn’t bring himself to much care. Sparks crawled up his face and across his back and chest, reflecting his agitation in a display of what lurked just beneath the surface, and when they charged him he set himself into a grim stance.

He pulled up and pushed out, forcing them back and knocking several of the looters to the floor.

_At least_ **_that_ ** _is reliable._

“Would you all just _stop?_ ” he snapped, hands held in front of him, gripping something imaginary. If he could squeeze it hard enough, pretend his fingers were claws, then maybe he could rip this imaginary thing to shreds.

He put up a hand and gestured at the pack, measuring his patience between his fingers, “I am _this close_ to losing my _shit_ and killing _everyone in this room_. I am just trying to pass _through_ and I am _tired of you people_.”

“But, your fingers are touching.”

He smiled. A dry, dead smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The corpse-like look of an overworked, underpaid retail worker thirty minutes into explaining that their bookstore doesn’t sell _charcoal grills_ to some over-priviliged fuck too used to intimidating their way into discounts and throwing tantrums over expired coupons to _listen_.

“Why yes. Yes they are.”

\------------------

Pick up and carry on. And so pick up and carry on he did, he picked himself up and took off around the room, keeping a hand on the wall. If he kept one hand on a wall the entire time, he’d probably manage to not end up where he already had, and if he did he could just switch walls at a junction, and find himself somewhere else.

Hopefully.

He wasn’t sure how solid that logic was, but it seemed as good a plan as any at this point. Simply following the walls had gotten him nowhere, and he hadn’t been _especially_ stringent about that anyhow. Time to make a plan and _stick_ to it.

As a bonus, running his hand against the wall as he ran quietly through the rooms felt _brilliant_. It didn’t matter so much that his hand started to go a little numb, the stone under his fingers kept him focused on his task. Find Spindrall’s chambers, talk to the man, earn his approval, get out. And maybe ask for a map on the way out. If Spindrall seemed amiable enough.

That was a pretty big ‘if’, but it’s not like he had other plans.

He left behind what used to be the looters, strewn haphazardly around the room, still smoldering where they lay.

\---------------------------------

As it turned out, keeping a hand on the wall was _exactly_ what he needed to do. It kept him from getting turned around in the near-identical rooms, and kept him on track. Even when his mind wandered, and he ran entirely on auto-pilot in the vague motion of _forwards_ , he was still moving towards his goal, with his hand pressed firmly into the wall.

He wasn’t expecting it, and he wasn’t ready for it in the slightest. His hand suddenly was no longer touching the wall, and in fact had gone _through_ what he had expected to _be_ wall. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a wall, and it wasn’t even really all that convincing _as_ a wall. It was just another turn in the path.

Except that he was _sure_ it hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He was almost certain. His mind had been wandering, sure, off in space somewhere while he breezed past looters and animals, but he was _fairly_ certain he wouldn’t have missed the path turning so abruptly. It would have looked like a break in the wall, like all turns were, but he’d missed it somehow.

_Curious._

This may well be what he was looking for. Maybe this, an odd and only somewhat explainable phenomena, was the indicator he’d been looking for. Perhaps, even, he _hadn’t_ been stupid for being entirely incapable of finding Spindrall. Or at least not _completely_ stupid.

The jury was still out on that one.

Whatever. Either way, this was _new_ , and more than a little weird, and it was better to follow the weird than to shy away from it if he was trying to track down an estranged Sith hermit in a tomb. If anyone was going to be in a weird part of the architecture it was going to be the weird _person_.

He stepped through the opening, through the new hallway with its unreasonably ornate, tall ceilings. At one point this had _probably_ been an impressive, flourishing display of power even through death, and while it was certainly _impressive_ , that was more on the survivability of the stonework. With bits of the tomb in ruins, and even more crumbling, it was a wonder and a testament to the engineering that it stayed standing at all, likely crushed little by little under the solid earth, and pulled ever downwards by the gravity of the twisted planet. 

A lot of things don’t survive Korriban, but apparently the houses of the dead do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guess whose interim title for this chapter was 'CHAPTER 4: MAYBE HE’LL FINALLY FIND SPINDRALL, FUCK IF I KNOW'
> 
> Because the answer is No fjdalkfja. He doesn't. Because I'm Like That.


End file.
